Lady Gaga Pays Emotional Tribute to Tony Bennett After Working Closely Together
The musician credited Bennett with saving her love of music with their collaboration.
Lady Gaga is remembering her close friend and fellow performer Tony Bennett. Bennett, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2016, died last Friday morning in New York City at the age of 96, with Gaga joining the throngs of fans and celebrities to pay tribute to the famed "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" singer.
Gaga, 37, shared a photo of her and a smiling Bennett embracing, and in a lengthy caption explained the intricacies of their friendship despite the decades between them. She also wrote that due to the nature of Bennett's Alzheimer's diagnosis, she had been saying her goodbyes to him for "a very long time," recalling, "We had a very long and powerful goodbye."
"Losing Tony to Alzheimer's has been painful but it was also really beautiful," Gaga wrote, in part. "An era of memory loss is such a sacred time in a persons (sic) life. There's such a feeling of vulnerability and a desire to preserve dignity. All I wanted was for Tony to remember how much I loved him and how grateful I was to have him in my life. But, as that faded slowly I knew deep down he was sharing with me the most vulnerable moment in his life that he could--being willing to sing with me when his nature was changing so deeply. I'll never forget this experience. I'll never forget Tony Bennett. If I could say anything to the world about this I would say don't discount your elders, don't leave them behind when things change. Don't flinch when you feel sad, just keep going straight ahead, sadness is part of it. Take care of your elders and I promise you will learn something special. Maybe even magical. And pay attention to silence-some of my musical partner and I's most meaningful exchanges were with no melody at all."
Gaga, who first rose to fame in the 2010s with pop hits like "Poker Face," and Bennett, one of the top performers of the '50s and early '60s, were unlikely friends and musical partners. The pair first crossed paths back in 2011 when Gaga performed a Nat King Cole song at a fundraiser for the Robin Hood Foundation. Bennett, who was in the audience, was so impressed by the singer that he suggested they record an album together, Gaga told Vogue in 2014. The musical duo went on to release their first single together, the Rodgers and Hart hit "The Lady is a Tramp," in 2011, before releasing their first album, Cheek to Cheek, in 2014.
Marking Bennett's 58th studio album and Gaga's fourth, and featuring jazz standards by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and those songwriters' contemporaries, Cheek to Cheek reached the top of the charts and earned Bennett and Gaga a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. Gaga called the album, which she and Bennett supported with a 36-show Cheek to Cheek tour from 2014 to 2015, "the "most important album" of her career. They followed the album up with a second joint album, Love for Sale, in 2021. That album was nominated for Album of the Year, Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical Grammys.
"Tony is one of my most favorite people on the whole planet, and I love him with all my heart. I can't tell you how much I learned from him, and what it's like to sing with a legend for so many years," Gaga told BBC Radio 2's Zoe Ball in 2021, also sharing with Parade in 2014, "When I came into this with Tony, he didn't say, 'You've got to take off all the crazy outfits and just sing. Be yourself.'"
Gaga and Bennett remained close throughout the remainder of Bennett's life, with Gaga supporting the singer throughout his Alzheimer's diagnosis, which his family revealed in 2021. Gaga told BBC Radio 2's The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show that it was "heartbreaking to watch" Bennett go through Alzheimer's, adding, "If you are with that person that you love, play some music from their childhood and I promise you that they will come to life in a way that is not expected, and not everyone you know, every case is different and everybody's different, but they're still there and my heart goes out to you."
Gaga and Bennett continued to perform together even after Bennett's diagnosis. In addition to releasing Love for Sale, the pair appeared together at Radio City Music Hall in 2021 in support of the album. The appearance marked Bennett's final public appearance. Their final onstage performance together was chronicled in the emotional CBS special One Last Time.
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